Handsome Johnny by Lee Server

Author:Lee Server
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

4

The morning after the explosion, Moreno Avenue stank of smoke and the sweet aroma of dynamite. Mickey Cohen, in his striped bathrobe and pajamas, posed for the press photographers as he gazed upon the rubble. Crime-scene investigators sifted the area for evidence, and detectives roamed the block questioning the neighbors. But there seemed almost no need for an investigation. Everybody knew who sent the bomb.

Governor Warren’s crime commission fingered Jack Dragna as the man responsible for the “terror tactics” in Brentwood, for the attempted murder of Mickey Cohen, and for several unsolved killings in the Los Angeles area, the result, they said, of a deadly squabble between two rivals for bookmaking operations, Cohen and “Dragna, an alien Italian.” It was Dragna’s side that was responsible for all the bloodletting, claimed the commission, describing Cohen as having “no appetite for a struggle with his rival.” (Cohen, in fact, downplayed the gang war gossip and the supposed “rivalry,” and was quoted as defending Jack: “He’s one of my best friends. He’s retired … and he don’t bother nobody.”)

With encouragement from Sacramento, the police were directed to grab Dragna and anybody connected with him. Cops nabbed six men in the first roundup, including Jack’s son, his brother, his brother’s two sons (who were working at the family-owned grocery store when they were arrested), underboss Momo Adamo, and Moe Shaman (a bookie known to be seeking revenge for Mickey Cohen’s killing of his brother, Max). But not Jack. Squad cars roared onto the front lawn of his home at 3927 Hubert Avenue. The man of the house was missing, but the cops rounded up his wife, Frances, and other family members and had them held in one room under armed guard while a half-dozen officers stormed through the house, pulling out drawers, upturning boxes and cases, and taking away every letter, contract, ledger, receipt, and cancelled check they found.

The jailed Dragna group was not charged and was released after three days. Jack came out of hiding. The police had been unable to find any evidence linking him to the bombing. Of course that didn’t mean they thought he was innocent. By August “Whiskey Bill” Parker was in charge of the police, and the war on crime intensified, with the foremost goal of defeating gangsters with funny foreign names. Patrols were assigned to follow—and harass—Dragna twenty-four hours a day. Wherever he went, cops boxed him in, a prowl car trailing in back, another hugging his side or rolling ahead of him. When he went into the barbershop at the Beverly Wilshire for his weekly haircut, a cop followed him in a minute later, sitting nearby and thumbing a magazine until he left. His wife and son got much the same treatment. A cruiser parked all day in front of Frank Dragna’s delicatessen, and the officers glared at the customers as they went in and out. Cops kept a close watch on all the known members of the Dragna gang. The assignment was referred to as “working the dagos.

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